Australian allrounder Sean Abbott has been left astonished by his personal record-breaking exploits after equalling the fastest-ever hundred hit in English T20 cricket.
The Surrey participant merely destroyed Kent’s bowling on the Oval within the T20 Blast competitors, blasting to a few figures in simply 34 balls on Friday evening to match the competitors document set by his late, nice compatriot Andrew Symonds for Kent towards Middlesex 19 years in the past.
Yet the modest Abbott, who’s rapidly develop into a preferred determine with the county champions, paid tribute to certainly one of Australian cricket’s outdated heroes afterwards, shrugging: “I don’t think people should be talking about me and ‘Roy’ in the same breath.
“But that was numerous enjoyable!”
It was an astounding knock which featured 11 sixes and seven fours, including 30 coming in the 17th over – 6-4-6-4-4-6 – off his luckless Australia pace colleague Kane Richardson.
Even more remarkably, the 31-year-old Abbott, who rescued a difficult situation for Surrey after coming in at 4-64, had previously never scored a fifty – his best had been 41 – in 76 T20 innings.
Instead, his 110 not out off 41 balls completely transformed the match, taking Surrey to 5-223 before they went on to limit Kent to 7-182 and seal a 41-run victory.
“Have to have a chat with Moises Henriques (his captain on the Sydney Sixers) again dwelling – possibly I’m batting too low!” laughed Abbott, when asked on Sky TV about the transformation from a man who’d only made 51 runs in seven innings in the entire 2022-23 BBL.
“No, we have a category aspect again dwelling on the Sixers, so I can not ask to bat an excessive amount of larger. Just grateful for this chance.
“This isn’t going to sink in for a while. First (Blast) game at the Oval in front of a home crowd (of 17,000), I haven’t batted that well for a while, nice to go out there and make the most of it. I had a little bit of luck – but, boy, that was a lot of fun.”
The luck got here when, after being shunted up the order to No.6 and racing to his half-century off 23 balls, together with three sixes bludgeoned over long-on off George Linde, he acquired dropped by the identical participant off Joey Evison when he’d powered on to 87.
But Abbott could not be stopped and reached the landmark with two extra back-to-back sixes off one other Australian, Kent’s 41-year-old veteran Michael Hogan.
FASTEST T20 HUNDREDS IN HISTORY
Chris Gayle – 30 balls (Royal Challengers Bangalore v Pune Warriors in Bangalore) 2013
Rishabh Pant – 32 balls (Delhi v Himachal Pradesh in Delhi) 2018
Wihan Lubbe – 33 balls (North West v Limpopo in Paarl) 2018
Andrew Symonds – 34 balls (Kent v Middlesex in Maidstone) 2004
Sean Abbott – 34 balls (Surrey v Kent at The Oval) 2023
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
